This invention relates to apparatus for drying and separating material and to a method of drying and separating material.
To enable artificial pollination of fruit producing plants, treees, vines, bushes, and the like to be carried out, it is necessary to firstly extract pollen from the flowers. This usually involves milling the flowers in order to remove the anthers therefrom and then drying the anthers and "disturbing" them in order to release the pollen stored therein. With research into artificial pollination of certain fruit bearing plants such as, for example, kiwifruit there is a need to be able to recover pollen in such a manner that the pollen has a high degree of viability.
Whilst it is possible to achieve recovery of pollen of high viability using stationary anthers, driers and subsequent pollen separation, such a method is not commercially acceptable due to the time taken to collect relatively small yields of pollen. Other known apparatus are not suitable for drying anthers for one reason or another, however, in the main, known apparatus is unsuitable because of the damage caused during the drying and/or "disturbing" process thereby resulting in pollen of low viability.
A known apparatus for the drying of materials is one which operates on a fluid bed principle whereby the material to be dried is placed within a chamber through which air is passed. Usually, the chamber is vertically orientated and the air is forced through an opening, or more usually, openings in the base of the chamber. This air flow through the chamber is ducted from the upper end thereof and passed to a separator, such as a cyclone, whereby the dried material entrained in the air is removed.
A conventional fluid bed drier is, however, unsuitable for drying anthers and separating pollen therefrom, especially anthers taken from the male flowers of a kiwifruit vine, as the antghers have long filaments that tend to entangle with each other therby causing the anthers to "nest" in lumps. Accordingly, in such a conventional fluid bed drier the air tends to blow one or two holes through the bed of anthers thereby resulting in unsatisfactory drying of the pollen.